21 July 2009

The World's Most Bicycle Friendly Cities - from Copenhagenize.com

Scanning the internet there seems to be a wide range of information about which cities are the world's most bicycle friendly. Many of them are opinion pieces and others use various criteria in making up the list.

Here at Copenhagenize we figured we'd just look at the hard facts. How many trips are made by bicycle in various cities? If there are many people choosing the bicycle in a city then that would indicate that cycling infrastructure is in place, that the culture is bicycle-friendly, that there is a will to transform cities into more liveable places and that cycling is, or has been, promoted positively.

We looked at the stats for OECD countries since these are traditionally cultures where the car is accessible to the citizens and is a main competitor to the bicycle.

In the interest of brevity, we chose to feature cities with percentages that are in double-digits. There are large cities and small on the list, from Tokyo to Davis, USA.

Kilometres cycled by Copenhageners so far today

Copenhagenize.com is the blog of Copenhagenize Design Company. Online since 2007 and highlighting the cycling life in Copenhagen and around the world.

40 years ago Copenhagen was just as car-clogged as anywhere else but now 41% of the population arriving at work or education do so on bicycles, from all over the Metro area. 56% of Copenhageners themselves use bicycles each day. They all use over 1000 km of bicycle lanes in Greater Copenhagen for their journeys. Copenhagenizing is possible anywhere.